‘They won’t be doing it again’ says Trump after airstrike on drug cartel boat

President Donald Trump has justified the lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the United States to send an unmistakable message to Latin American cartels.

Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Mr Trump said the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US.

“There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands that,” Mr Trump said while hosting Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki at the White House on Wednesday.

He added: “Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.'”

Tuesday’s strike was an astonishing departure from typical US drug interdiction efforts at a time when Mr Trump has ordered a major US navy build-up in the waters near Venezuela.

Later on Wednesday, secretary of state Marco Rubio warned that such operations “will happen again”.

Mr Rubio said previous US interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked in stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and beyond.

“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Mr Rubio said on a visit to Mexico.

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said on Fox & Friends that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was running his country “as a kingpin of a drug narco-state”.

Mr Hegseth said officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing”.

But the Republican administration has not presented any evidence supporting Mr Trump’s claim that operators of the vessel were from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and were trying to smuggle in drugs.

“President Trump is willing to go on offence in ways that others have not seen,” said Mr Hegseth, who declined to detail how the strike was carried out.

Venezuela’s government, which has long minimised the presence of Tren de Aragua in the South American country, limited its reaction to the strike to questioning the veracity of a video publicised by the Trump administration showing the attack.

Mr Trump said the operation, which he said killed 11, was carried out in international waters. He also noted that the gang is designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organisation.

Unlike its counterparts from Colombia, Brazil and central America, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine across international borders, according to InSight Crime, which last month published a 64-page report on the gang based on two years of research.

The US announced plans last month to boost its maritime force in the waters off Venezuela to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels.

Mr Maduro’s government has responded by deploying troops along Venezuela’s coast and border with neighboring Colombia, as well as by urging Venezuelans to enlist in a civilian militia.